Subject To Change
by l-dhenson
Summary: (Chapter VI: Sharp-Dressed Man.) Sometimes it pays to read the fine print on a cure. Carl and Van Helsing have a few adjustments to make as they head back to Rome.
1. Getting the Hell Out of Dodge

Title: The Title Is Subject To Change  
Part: 1 of ?  
Rating: PG  
Summary: Carl and Van Helsing have a few adjustments to make as they head back to Rome. Picks up where the movie left off...well, no. Not precisely.  
Author's Notes: My first VH fic was absolutely serious; this is a complete one-eighty. I have never, ever posted a WIP: my writing style precludes it (I rarely write a story start-to-finish, but rather assemble it like a jigsaw). So this is something of an experiment. If I get stuck (hopefully not), I'll pull it.  
Feedback: How's my ficcing? Click the button.

* * *

It could have been worse, of course.

The day was moderately overcast, but at least the slight wind was at their backs. There was only a thin layer of frost; a single step readily revealed the yellowed grass and slippery soil beneath. The ground was relatively level here; it was fairly reasonable terrain to tramp upon even whilst carrying all their gear divided between them, though who knew how long it would stay that way.

What he wouldn't give for a nice warm stifling forge-hot laboratory or a musty decaying library, but really, the wilderness wasn't all that bad, when you had under-lit castles and vaguely hostile villages as your immediate alternatives.

Oh yes, it could have been much worse. 'So...you're sure no-one's following us?' he whispered after a few more minutes.

There was a slight pause, then Van Helsing muttered under his breath, 'I don't hear anything.' He stopped and lifted his head, sniffing the air...for what, exactly, Carl wasn't sure he wanted to know. 'Don't smell anything, either.'

'Good,' he said, at normal volume this time, and they resumed walking. He adjusted the strap over his right shoulder. The packs had been heavy to begin with, and they'd only gone a half dozen or so miles by this point and the supplies weren't getting any lighter. Too bad about the horses. He'd estimated an extra two or three days for the journey on foot, but the weight seemed to be pushing him into the muddy ground with every step and at this rate he'd be up to his knees by the time they reached the coast.

'The last thing we need,' he went on, 'is those villagers pulling out their pitchforks and flaming torches again on our account. Rather zealous, aren't they?'

'They've had a lot of practice,' Van Helsing said non-committally.

The unfamiliar pressure of the pistols wasn't made any better by the fact that the one on the left kept bumping into the bedroll and jamming itself repeatedly into his hip. He shifted uncomfortably. How in the world did anyone wear these all the time?

'So, um,' he said, mostly to break the monotony of the sound of their footsteps crunching through snow, 'did you have your, er, talk with her after all?'

'We talked.' Van Helsing broke pace momentarily to scratch with what might have been embarrassment behind his ear before he continued with his reply. 'Anna was all right with it, actually. We agreed it probably wouldn't have worked in the long run. She's a great girl, but...you know...'

Carl thought he caught something almost like a shrug out of the corner of his eye. 'Yes?'

'Well, she's lovely of course, but she's only got two...er...' He trailed off as he noticed Carl's look. 'A woman really needs a minimum of eight, I say.'

'A matter of taste, I'm sure,' Carl mumbled.

'Oh, of course. Mind you, she's got beautiful hair, but a bit more would've done wonders, too.'

There wasn't much to say to that, so Carl concentrated instead on tugging the holsters to a hopefully less tenderizing position. He wondered if he could have asked for the Tojo blades instead; they wouldn't have banged into things, at least not without some effort. But Van Helsing was still carrying those, and perhaps that was for the better. He'd likely slice off his own arms or something, and then who'd do the cooking around here?

'She gave a nice speech in the square,' he told Van Helsing. 'The people actually looked a little sorry to hear you'd sneaked off early.'

'Missed my own stoning, you mean?'

'No. She made you out to be quite the hero, in fact.'

Again with the almost-shrug.

'She said you just didn't want the attention and all that and preferred to slip away as silent as you came, et cetera. To be honest, the people didn't protest all that much.'

'I still think you didn't need to stay for that.'

'Just a bit of support for the fact that Dracula's truly finally dead. The presence of a man of the cloth can lend quite a lot of assurance, you know.'

'As opposed to the presence of a man of no cloth?'

'Van Helsing...'

'Sorry.'

They plodded on in silence for a while longer. All in all, this wasn't turning out to be the sort of adventure Carl had envisioned when he'd first been given - and rather rudely, in his opinion - this assignment. Were Van Helsing's missions generally like this?

He irritably stamped a clump of ice crystals off the side of his boot. 'Think it'll snow again before we get out of Transylvania?'

'Don't know. Does Jinette crap in the woods?'

Carl turned and shook his finger in front of Van Helsing's nose.

'That was _awful_,' he told the large black wolf. 'No biscuit for you.' 


	2. Never Send Van Helsing For Take Aways

Author's Notes: Just curious, did anyone guess that VH was a wolf before reading the final paragraph in Chapter I? I sprinkled clues throughout, but I tried not to make it too obvious.

* * *

Nikoru Sanzo: Eight...eyes. That's it, eyes. Van Helsing has a thing for spiders. :whistles innocently:

HughJackmanFan: Glad you're enjoying it so far.

Seadragon68: Hey, the traditional line is much worse. Stick around, _I'm_ not always sure where I'm going with this, either.

* * *

He poked at a sizzling branch, trying to keep the little fire from collapsing in on itself. Orange sparks flew from it, like tiny aimless lightning-bugs, only this wasn't late summer.

This wasn't in his job description, he thought. A bit of specialised training would really have helped. The fire in the forge he could get going, no problem. Reading lamps he could handle with his eyes closed. Bunsen burners were a snap, although sometimes they were also a fwoosh and a bang, much to the vexation of his colleagues.

A campfire in sub-freezing weather was another matter entirely. Striking the match was the easy part, but then how did you keep the flame and tinder from scattering everywhere, especially in this constant light wind?

He shivered, pulling the cloak tighter around himself. The cold didn't seem to bother Van Helsing, although it could be argued that he had the unfair advantage of a new fur coat.

Speaking of which, what was taking Van Helsing so long? Not that he begrudged him the time, as they both knew game was scarce in these parts. But it was nearly dark, and he didn't relish the thought of Van Helsing prowling on his own out there, especially because it also meant that _he_ was sitting on his own out _here_.

'Mmphh,' said a voice right behind him, and Carl did his best to make his sudden leap up look as nonchalant as possible, even if a two-foot sitting leap was stretching the definition of 'nonchalant' to rather tenuous limits.

He took in the sight of the wolf, and the brace of dead quail that had been dropped at his feet. They weren't very big, hardly more than skin and feathers, but oh well.

He couldn't pass it up. 'I manage to get the whole camp set up in all that time and this is it, O Mighty Hunter?'

'All that's out there,' Van Helsing said, a little indistinctly.

Carl stared at him, then glanced at the - intact - birds. 'Is your mouth full?'

The wolf hung his head, and Carl could have sworn he saw his throat bob just the slightest bit. 'No?'

'Not now, it isn't!'

'Nothing out there but birds.'

'At least three of them, apparently.'

'All right, all right,' Van Helsing grumbled. 'Hunting's hard work. Try getting a noseful of fresh raw quail sometime and see if _you_ can resist.'

'I'm resisting right now.' He moved the quail closer to the firelight and started stripping the feathers from one of them. 'You've been on your feet all day, you know. We could've just gone with the dried beef.'

'No thanks.'

'I thought you _liked_ dried beef.'

'That was before I knew any better.' Van Helsing licked his muzzle, nostrils dilating. 'You could go a little faster. They won't bite. In fact, I think they're dead.'

'What are you complaining about? You've already had an appetizer.'

'Well, I'm a growing wolf.'

'No, you're not.'

'All right, I'm growing _into_ being a wolf. How's that?'

Couldn't argue with that, Carl mused, as Van Helsing circled the rock Carl was seated on to drop beside the fire, putting the friar between himself and the meat. It hadn't even been forty-eight hours.

One had to admit, the antidote had certainly done a good job of curing Van Helsing of being a werewolf. A werewolf no longer, no doubt about that. The potion had done everything the legends claimed it did. It had broken the half-man, half-wolf tension by swinging the pendulum back towards some form of unity.

Trouble was, it hadn't quite swung the way they'd anticipated.

Anna had been unconscious at the time of Van Helsing's transformation, but what they had tactfully declined to tell her was that she had probably remained unconscious for slightly longer than expected aftwards, because paws as it turned out were just no good for holding onto sizable objects when one suddenly went from being a biped to a quadruped. _That little bump on your temple, miss? That Aleera, she was a nasty one, eh? Oh, er, I think I may have left the water running upstairs, excuse me..._

A night of frantically digging through the crumbling library in Dracula's castle had turned up, around five a.m., a tattered slip that explicated the part the legends had neglected to mention. The 'turning into a wolf' aspect was, fortunately or unfortunately depending on how optimistic a frame of mind one was in, the expected result. The good news was, it was temporary.

The bad news was, they had a month to wait.

He'd explained it to Van Helsing and Anna as best he could. It was a bit like stretching a rubber band. Right now, with Van Helsing a stable wolf (more or less), the band was slack. The next full moon, with all its werewolf-inducing influence, would provide the power to yank that rubber band just hard enough to pop, fly in the opposite direction - _et voila_, Van Helsing would be back to the joys of walking upright and not having to worry about people treading on his tail whilst he slept.

'Wouldn't the same thing just happen the next full moon after that?' Van Helsing had asked doubtfully.

He'd shrugged. 'No. A one-time deal, apparently.'

'So you mean I'm supposed to hang about an entire month just twiddling my thumbs?'

'No, because you haven't got any. Now listen, there's not much point staying here. I think the Cardinal should get a good look at you first-hand, before he starts hearing rumors about you no longer being human and sends out Knights after us to sweep things up.'

He was prodded out of his reverie as a nose poked at his knee.

'You don't want those kidneys, do you Carl?' the wolf said. 'It's just that they're better when they're raw.'


	3. Late Night with Friar Carl

Nikoru Sanzo: Thanks! As for what happened with Anna: VH picked her up off the couch, the cure took effect, and...well, wolves are no good at holding things in their forelimbs, you know? Anna, as it turned out, was only unconscious, a fact not helped by VH's inability to keep her upright whilst in wolf form. It was quite considerate of her not to die, as it saved Our Heroes a lengthy detour to the coast. She and VH parted on amiable terms. Perhaps she has allergies.

RozzandMaya: Thank you, and do stick around; we'll see where it goes from here.

HughJackmanFan: Don't worry, VH didn't really hit him, just gave him a little prod. Dinner's a high priority for wolves, you know.

Seadragon68: Heh. VH's sure taking life as a wolf in stride. Life's probably much less complicated when one's a wolf.

Shout-out to DR for your review over on Yahoo!

* * *

The stars were just a sprinkling of tiny bright points overhead. He realised, much to his surprise, that he'd never actually bothered learning the constellations before. Well, he'd never had a need to navigate, they weren't bright enough to read by, and they weren't combustible - well, not _practically_ combustible - and so they just hadn't been very high on his list of priorities, especially not when there were new unstable chemicals to work with (and, in many cases, later attempt to mop up).

So they didn't provide him much by way of reference, but it was either them or the insides of his eyelids.

It was said that sleeping out in the open was good for one's health. He would agree, if by 'good for one's health' they meant getting one's back all soggy from the damp ground and shivering so hard one woke oneself up every few minutes.

He tugged the scratchy woolen blanket a little higher around his nose.

'I heard that.'

He angled a sideways glare at Van Helsing. 'You're supposed to be keeping watch.'

'And you're supposed to be sound asleep.'

'I might be. Perhaps I'm just talking in my sleep. You never know.'

Van Helsing didn't reply. There was the sound of rustling from the direction of their packs, and Carl turned to see the wolf reach in and pull out something long and supple in his jaws. Van Helsing dragged it over to where he lay, and with a twist of his head tossed part of it, with a little jingle of metal, atop the friar.

Carl put out a gloved hand and encountered Van Helsing's leather coat. 'You're giving me this?'

'Does it look like it fits me? And it's only for a month.'

'Oh. Well...thank you.'

'I'm keeping an eye on it.'

'I'll try not to toss it on the fire.'

'Appreciate it.'

He settled it over himself as a spare blanket. The thick leather was already trapping what little body heat he had left, and maybe he was just fancying it, but he might actually be beginning to warm back up.

'You don't need it?' he asked, just to be polite, of course.

'You see this fur? It's double-layered, you know.'

'Really?'

'Take my word for it.' The wolf dropped lazily down to the ground, against his left side, not a bad complement to the banked fire warming him on his right. Van Helsing tilted his head back. 'What's so interesting up there?'

Carl huffed. 'You were supposed to be watching the woods, not watching me.'

'Who needs eyes to keep watch?'

'Oh.' Hmmm. He focused again on the stars. 'Do you know any constellations?'

'Well, not by name. I know enough to get around.' There was a pause. 'Bit blurry tonight.'

The sky was crystal clear. 'Are your eyes all right?'

'Fine, I think. Just...not very important. Why look at things when you can smell them leagues away? Or hear them?'

'Ah. I see what you mean.' He pointed upwards with his chin. 'You see that cluster of stars there? To the right of the moon?'

'Your right or my right?'

'Oh. Your...left.' He extricated an arm from the blankets and pointed. 'One, two, three, and then it zig-zags the rest of the way down and around...?'

'Yes. So?'

'It looks just like Father Mahone.'

'It does not.'

'Yes, it does. Who else has a hump on his nose like that?'

'You're insane.'

'And over here...' He sketched it out. 'Head with a beak, and the wings...?'

'A gryphon?'

'Yes!'

'With an alarmingly long front leg.'

'A pity it's up front.'

This time it was definitely a snort. 'Carl...'

He pointed. 'Stumpy Sphinx With Extra Head.'

'You mean just above the tree-line?'

'Yes! There, you saw it too.'

Van Helsing's head flopped down onto his front paws. 'Oh, god. Leave me out of this.'

Carl grinned.


	4. Map Quest

HughJackmanFan: Heh, glad you're still having fun with this.

Andrea: Thanks. I haven't seen _Dragonheart_...but I do appreciate the compliment!

Suze: It's been fun writing this so far. Update comin' right up.

* * *

Early evening found them briefly halted again. Carl sat on his still-bundled bedroll, Van Helsing's chin on his knee. Both were bent over an unfolded map laid out on the grass before them, squinting at it in the low light.

Carl pointed to a spot not too far from the Maros. 'I think we're here," he said, trying to sound more certain than he felt.

'Really? Because I thought we were a bit more south than that.'

'Are you sure?'

'Well...no.'

Ever since the afternoon, the sky had been so heavily-overcast that Carl had had to pull out the compass to make sure they were still headed more or less in the right direction. It sat now on top of the map, but it wasn't doing much more than telling them that they weren't accidentally headed towards the Black Sea instead.

'I think,' Carl said with an attempt at cheerfulness, 'we're reasonably in more or less the right area.'

'At least we probably haven't wandered into Romania, you mean?'

'Yes. Look, the river, see? Then if you look down here, you get to - what's this? A lake?'

'Whoops.'

'I would appreciate it if you refrained from slobbering on our map.'

'One little drop is not "slobbering".'

Carl dabbed it away with his cuff, then wiped it thoroughly on Van Helsing's shoulder. It was like rubbing his sleeve against a wall of muscle covered in black fur. 'Moisture of any sort does not belong on a map printed on non-waterproofed paper, understand? Aren't you supposed to have, I don't know, some sort of natural canine instinct for getting places?'

'For finding old denning sites, maybe. Locating sea-ports? Not so much.'

Carl let out a sigh. 'There's no way around it, you know. We can follow the river for as long as we like, but we need to get over those mountains. And it's more or less plenty of mountains until we get to the port at Budva.'

'I know. I was there on the way in, remember?'

That was the white elephant neither of them had particularly wanted to discuss for the past two days. There was no getting over those mountains on foot, at least not whilst carrying their supplies. But one could only ignore the issue for so long, especially since - Carl ruefully stretched his lower back - he was beginning to suspect the figurative pachyderm had decided to nestle itself into his own pack.

The easiest thing to do would be to get a horse, but Carl didn't think it possible to actually ride one alongside a wolf, at least not without an assortment of sprains, contusions, and outright concussions. He _could_ claim to have been heroically (and repeatedly) injured in the line of duty, but it probably wasn't worth it.

'I could chase the horse all the way to Montenegro,' Van Helsing offered. 'It'd save a lot of time.'

Carl stared at him. 'How did you know I was thinking of...? You're not telepathic now, are you?'

'Would I tell you if I were?'

'Er...'

Van Helsing flicked one wedge-shaped ear in frustration, and Carl rubbed absently at it. 'You need a horse,' Van Helsing told him. 'You know it, and I know it. We'll find a village tomorrow, and you can get one.'

'We'll have to travel separately. You'll have to stay out of the way.'

'I know. Don't worry, I'll be fine.'

'I was worried about _me_.'

'Bloody monk.'

'Friar.' Carl bent over the map again. 'There's a village coming up, I think. A little box - is that what a little box is? yes - right there. So small, evidently, that it doesn't even have a name, or perhaps the map-maker ran out of ink. We could reach it in the morning.'

'Carl?'

'Yes?'

Van Helsing had one eye cocked at the sky. 'You know how you didn't want the map to get wet?'

'Yes...?'

'Too late.'

A blinding streak of lightning flashed across the sky, followed almost immediately by a deafening clap of thunder and, just to complete the set, a bone-chilling torrent of rain.

'Oh, _dammit!_'


	5. Rain Doubt

Author's Note:

The original title has become self-fulfilling. _Au revoir_ old title; I'm changing it from 'The Title is Subject to Change' to simply 'Subject to Change,' which rolls much better off the tongue, in my humble opinion.

* * *

Seadragon68: What, you mean a new fur coat isn't reason enough to enjoy the curse? Heh.

Nikoru Sanzo: Burst spleens...then my job here is done. Glad you're enjoying it.

Runts Gal: Welcome! You've made my very happy by saying I've gotten the flavor of the relationship from the movie...I didn't want to stray too far from that, so it's great to know it's working.

eris: It'd certainly make the ride much more interesting, eh?

HughJackmanFan: Poor map, it never gets any respect.

* * *

'It smells like wet dog.'

'It smells like wet friar.'

'It smells like wet dog _more_.'

'A human _would_ say that.'

'A pity you're stuck with one, then.'

'Huh. Beats being stuck with two, I guess.'

'Ha! Van Helsing, just wait until we get to Rome. It's full of civilisation, don't you know.'

'Stop making it sound so appealing.'

'A roof over our heads...running water...'

'Roofs block out the sky.'

'That's rather the point.'

'And we had plenty of running water not twenty minutes ago. All the running water you could ever want.'

'I don't mean pouring down from above!'

'Don't be picky, Carl.'

'We couldn't have found this overhang sooner? Such as when it was actually still raining?'

'Carl, after the first fifteen minutes, you couldn't have gotten any wetter.'

'That doesn't mean I had to stand out in it for another fifty.'

'You're still shivering, aren't you.'

'A little.'

'A lot.'

'Aaaagghh!'

'Bloody hell! Your ear's like ice!'

'So's your _nose_, you lumbering great beast!'

'My nose is _supposed_ to be cold. Pull up the collar...there's buckles. Do them up.'

'I'm doing them.'

'And you're sitting in a draft. Move over there.'

'All right, all right...You know, if I had a horse, it wouldn't fit in here with us.'

'Horses can and often do stand out in the rain, you know. I don't think they dissolve in water.'

'Yes, but then it might not dry off. Have you ever sat a wet horse?'

'Many times.'

'Oh.'

'Uusually whilst running after something very fast.'

'Sorry.'

'Or whilst running away from something very fast. Don't worry about it.'

'Van Helsing?'

'Yes?'

'What...what do you think the Cardinal will say when he sees you?'

'"That Van Helsing, whatta nice-a young man, he deserves a raise-a."'

'Van Helsing, be serious.'

'You'll come up with something. You'll break it to him scientifically and diplomatically, and he'll agree.'

'Agree to what?'

'To not have me terminated.'

'Maybe you should stay outside Rome.'

'And then what?'

'I'll tell them you went missing in action. You come back after the full moon...tell them you, I don't know, hit your head and had amnesia...'

'That's the oldest excuse in the world, Carl.'

'It doesn't mean it's not sometimes true.'

'You'd lie to Jinette's face?'

'It _could_ be true. You couldn't, perhaps, actually hit your head with a rock or something? For verisimilitude?'

'I think you need to work on your strategy.'

'That's gratitude for you.'

'I think you need some sleep, Carl.'

'You aren't going to snore all night, are you?'

'I do not snore.'

'It's just that it'll echo quite loudly in here.'

'Good _night_, wet friar.'

'Good night, wet dog.'


	6. Sharp Dressed Man

Author's Note:

It's been a while since I updated this; I was temporarily lured away by some other fandoms. Didn't mean to leave these guys hanging...

* * *

Runts Gal: Thanks! That's one of my favorite bits, too.

oubeanieu: Glad you're enjoying it! As for how Van Helsing can talk as a wolf...I'm not touching that one :-)

Seadragon68: It's a hazard in this line of work, I guess.

Suze: Stay tuned...

The Logical Ghost: Thank you. It's been fun writing this!

* * *

No one could ever accuse Carl of being a vain man. The jester's costume had not only qualified as 'a bit much', it had surpassed it with flying colors; and the less said about The Dress, the better. But even he had to admit that he was probably committing some sort of sartorial _faux pas_ at this moment in time.

It wasn't so much that the cuffs hung past his wrists, or that the hem of the coat brushed over the ground as he walked, picking up a decorative fringe of mud and the occasional embellishing twig. It was, rather, the acute sense that he really did not belong on the inside of this coat.

Not, of course, that he had really belonged on the inside of petticoats and a bodice, either. And the only good thing that could be said about being on the inside of a pair of striped trousers and a belled cap was that at least one didn't have to _look_ at oneself whilst stuck on the inside of the damned things.

But his cloak was still recovering from its losing battle with the rain the night before. An almost absolute lack of dry tinder had led to a definitely absolute lack of fire, and the half-damp bundle of limp wool now hung from the straps of his pack like a...well, half-damp bundle of limp wool. It was not, he suspected, doing his overall look any favors.

This wasn't just any coat. The man who belonged in this coat, he thought, was a man who chased horrors and destroyed monsters on a regular basis. A man who had plunged from the top of the Notre Dame and lived to tell the tale. A man who knew what waking nightmares really _were_ all about.

That man, however, was currently sniffing energetically about in the underbrush with his tail up, and it fell to _this_ man, who destroyed on a regular basis nothing more than most of his laboratory and his colleagues' equipment/hems/eyebrows, to make some use of the coat in the windy aftermath of a rainstorm.

It would likely have felt just as wrong had he seen Van Helsing in a friar's habit. Well - _now_ certainly, but even so when Van Helsing was in normal form.

He didn't belong in this coat. _Sacrilegious_, that was the word.

There had altered their course now and were headed northwest, aiming for the river as per yesterday's plan. Van Helsing made a wide circle and trotted back towards him. 'Frozen yet?' the wolf asked, entirely too cheerfully in Carl's opinion.

'Van Helsing, with the damp, it's colder than it was yesterday.'

'You want to pick up the pace a little. Get the blood moving.'

Sharp teeth nipped at his heels, not touching him once. Carl ignored it. 'Pick up the pace? Whilst wading about in this thing?'

'What's wrong with the coat?'

'Nothing, unless you're not built like a tree.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

Thunder grumbled somewhere, probably complaining about how far away it was. The next gust of wind that blew in their faces prompted the nearest tree to fling its hidden reserve of raindrops at them. Cursing, Carl wiped the icy water from his eyes, and decided he could afford to speed up a little, after all. How much farther to the river? Vampire slaying, that was the easy job; took a few days and one was done. It was the commute that was the killer.

'Do you, er,' he hesitated, 'ever wonder how we got back from Dracula's castle?'

'What, you mean in that we didn't know where it was relative to the village so we couldn't have walked back, and the portal only worked one way so we couldn't have returned through it?'

'Yes. A bit strange, don't you think?'

'Now that you mention it, I don't remember a thing about it. It was as though we simply blacked out, woke up, and found ourselves right back in oo! Rabbit.'

'_Van Helsing! Get back here!_'

'Mmphmf?'

'Well, I didn't want you bolting halfway across Creation just to chase that thing.'

'Mfmm gmmph.'

'Don't talk with your mouth full.'

'I'm insulted by the fact that you thought I'd have to run more than fifty feet to catch it.'

'Oh, yes. I'm sorry, I forgot who I was talking to, Mr Famous Rabbit Hunter.' They walked in silence for a few moments. 'I don't suppose you saved me any?'

Van Helsing gave a disdainful sniff. 'You don't even _like_ raw rabbit.' 


End file.
